Regulation and the market for checks

This paper presents an analysis of the market for checks using the monopoly problem as an approximation. The need for such an analysis arises due to the following policy proposal: from time to time, the Turkish government considers increasing the lump-sum amount that drawee banks are legally responsible to pay per bad check. The purpose of this proposal is to ease out firms' liquidity needs especially during recessions. We show that banks will tend to restrict the quantity of checks as a response to such a policy action. We report that a percentage point increase in banks' obligation per bad check could lead up to a 1.7% decline in the total supply of checks on the margin. This means that such a policy change may harm the real economy rather than providing support. We establish that the extent of the monopoly distortion depends on three main factors: (i) the elasticity of demand for checks, (ii) how fast the fraction of bad checks increases with the total supply of checks, and (iii) the degree of preference heterogeneity.     

Computers and the Demand for Skilled Labour: Industry- and Establishment-Level Panel Evidence for the UK

We use two United Kingdom panel data sets to investigate skill-upgrading in the United Kingdom and how it has been affected by computerisation. Census data reveals that most aggregate skill-upgrading is explained by within-establishment rises in skill composition. Such upgrading is significantly related to computerisation, a relation that is robust to different worker and computer types, endogeneity, human capital upgrading and other technology measures.     

Search and the market for lemons

This paper provides an explanation, not found in the literature, for the origin of quality dispersion in product markets. The consumer's pure experience case of sequential search is modeled and the model is closed by explaining the firm's optimal decision making problem. Then the necessary and sufficient conditions for a non-degenerate distribution of quality are established. It is also shown that if a non-degenerate equilibrium distribution of quality does exist then it is an unstable equilibrium. The only stable equilibrium distribution is the degenerate lemon distribution. Therefore the model provides added support for Akerlof's argument that lemons tend to drive out good quality.     

Globalisation and the Market for Team-Mates

The globalisation of firms is explored at theoretical and empirical levels. The idea is that a global firm is a multi-cultural team. The existence of a global firm is somewhat puzzling. Combining workers who have different cultures, legal systems, and languages imposes costs on the firm that would not be present were all workers to conform to one standard. In order to offset the costs of cross-cultural dealing, there must be complementarities between the workers that are sufficiently important to overcome the costs. The search for the 'best practice' is analysed and empirical support from an examination of trading patterns is provided.     

Search and the market for ideas

We study a market where innovators, who are good at coming up with ideas, can sell them to entrepreneurs, who might be better at implementing them. The market is decentralized, with random matching and bargaining. Ideas are characterized by five salient features: they are indivisible; partially nonrival; intermediate inputs; subject to informational frictions; and difficult to collateralize. This last feature gives rise to a demand by entrepreneurs for liquidity. We determine which ideas get traded in equilibrium and compare this to the efficient outcome, emphasizing the impact of bargaining and liquidity considerations. Among other applications, we study how outcomes in the idea market affect the labor market.     

Entrepreneurship and the taste for discrimination

This paper analyzes the connection between discrimination and entrepreneurship. We contend that the entrepreneur is the central mechanism through which inefficiencies associated with discrimination are competed away. In addition to illuminating the mechanism through which existing discrimination tends to be eliminated, we also consider the more difficult case of consumer discrimination. The standard assumption is that consumer discrimination will not be competed away through market forces. In contrast, we find that entrepreneurs can correct the inefficiencies associated with this form of discrimination by influencing the costs and benefits associated with consumer discrimination. We empirically analyze the integration of black players in Major League Baseball to illustrate our theoretical arguments regarding entrepreneurship and consumer discrimination.     

图书资料为教学科研服务初探

高校图书馆的发展正面临着机遇和挑战,作为高校的教学辅助单位,高校图书馆如何定位,如何稳固而又有序地发展,是现在各高校急切需要解决的问题。根据哈尔滨师范大学图书馆的一些做法,与大家共同探讨高校图书馆的发展发向和出路问题。     

Mergers and the market for organization capital

In this paper, mergers are an equilibrium outcome in which acquirers “marry” targets so as to gain access to their organization capital. Firms with lower learning costs about the new technology are not necessarily those that manage it best once it is mature. Since there are gains from trade, a market for organization capital can arise through mergers. This model generates a merger wave after a shock to technology and is consistent with several other stylized facts on mergers documented in the literature.     

Learning for Innovation and the Skill Premium

The computer revolution took very long to pay off in productivity growth in the computer-using sectors. The relative wage of skilled workers, however, has risen sharply from the early days of the computer revolution onward. As skilled workers wages reflect their productivity, the two observations together pose a puzzle.This paper provides a micro-based explanation for the long diffusion period of the computer revolution. The general equilibrium model of growth zooms in on the research process and provides an explanation for sluggish growth with booming relative wages of the skilled. Technological progress in firms is driven by research aimed at improving the production technology (innovation) and by assimilation of ideas or principles present outside the firm (learning). A new General Purpose Technology (GPT) like the computer revolution generates an initial slowdown in economic growth and an increase in the skill premium.Acknowledgement I am indebted to Theo van de Klundert for suggestions and encouragement. Suggestions by Jan Boone, Bas Jacobs, Patrick Francois, Henri de Groot, Lex Meijdam, Niek Nahuis Sjak Smulders, Harald Uhlig and anonymous referees have contributed to the paper.     

Retraining for the unemployed and the quality of the job match

ABSTRACT

In Germany, retraining is an important measure in active labour market policy, providing unemployed individuals with extensive vocational training. Using administrative data, we show that retraining participants are more likely to take up jobs that require their educational degree and are more often employed in those occupations for which they have received vocational training. Moreover, retraining leads to higher earnings. As these effects may be driven by the positive impact of retraining on employment, we additionally try to isolate the direct effect by restricting our analyses to those formerly unemployed who find employment irrespective of participation in retraining.     

Accidental Bequests: A Curse for the Rich and a Boon for the Poor*

When accidental bequests signal otherwise unobservable individual characteristics, such as productivity and longevity, the population should be partitioned into two groups: those who do not receive an inheritance and those who do. The first tagged group receives a Mirrlees second‐best tax schedule; the second group, when its type is fully revealed, faces a first‐best tax schedule. Receiving an inheritance makes high‐ability types worse off and low‐ability types better off. High‐ability individuals face a bequest tax of more than 100 percent, while low‐ability types face a bequest tax that can be smaller, as well as larger, than 100 percent, and it might even be negative.     

金融企业激励机制建设的理论基础与现实选择

面对当前金融资金机构对我国金融企业高层次专业人才的竞争，中国金融企业必须高度重视激励机制的建设。本认为，我国金融企业应按照激励要素产生、传导、持续原理，遵循竞争性、公平性、激励性、经济性等原则，设计出既符合国际惯例又适合中国国情的激励机制。     

税式支出管理的国际经验与我国的选择

目前我国财税改革的重心在于税收管理,而税收管理的关键则在于税收优惠管理.加强对税收优惠的管理可采用多种方式,但最有效的方式是借鉴国际成功经验,全面推行税式支出管理制度.国际上许多国家都建立了这项管理制度,并在统计、评价税收优惠,提升税收优惠政策有效性、合理化方面取得了较好的效果.本文在对税式支出管理的国际经验进行归纳总结的基础上,分析了我国税式支出管理的现实状况,并重点从科学合理确定税式支出范围、提升税式支出的法制化和规范化、建立完善的税式支出统计制度以及加强对税式支出进行成本效益分析等方面,提出了构建既与国际惯例接轨又具有中国特色的税式支出管理制度框架的设想.     

International outsourcing and the demand for skills

This paper explores the impact of international outsourcing on the demand for skills in three small and open EU economies. A model of variable costs and factor demand functions for different skill levels and imported as well as domestic materials are constructed. International outsourcing is treated directly as a substitution process between labour of different skills and imported inputs. The direct consequence of international outsourcing for labour is measured by the cross price elasticities. These cross price elasticities indicate a negative outsourcing impact on low- and medium-skilled labour in the three countries and on high-skilled labour in two out of the three countries. This outsourcing effect on labour is compared with the direct effect of embodied technical change and of the technical change bias. International outsourcing has a more unambigous and significant negative impact on labour than technical change. Technical change is either labour using (embodied technical change) or only slightly biased in favour of high-skilled labour. When the cost savings effect of international outsourcing is taken into account, an indirect positive stimulus for all skill categories arises from a greater demand for goods. It can be shown, that this indirect positive effect can compensate for a large part of the negative substitution impact of international outsourcing on labour.     

On adaptation and the demand for health

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impacts of adaptation to failing health. This is done by integrating adaptation processes in a Grossman type of pure consumption model. Model simulations show that adaptation affects the health variables by lowering the incentives to invest in health, as well as smoothing the optimal health stock path over the life cycle. Whether or not the risk of mortality is an object of choice has important effects when studying adaptation, as well as for the joint development of the health variables.     

Decentralization and the search for policy solutions

We use mathematical and computational models to analyze theability of federated organizations to solve difficult problems.Federated organizations may have some inherent advantages forsolving difficult problems since they can empower multiple subunitsto search for policy solutions in parallel and exploit and combinethe mutual information discovered by the subunits to revealeven better solutions. We find that the benefits of these methodsof experimentation first increase and then decrease as the problemof finding good policies increases in difficulty.     

Gender and the demand for medical care

The consumption of a set of diverse medical services is analysed in an effort to determine the sources of high utilization by women.Unlike previous studies of gender and the demand for medical services,the range of services investigate allows us to draw conclusions about the influence of physicians as agents.We use a modified version of the almost-ideal demand model in the emperical analysis which,unlike the double-log quadratic, or linear demand models, is consistent with constraints imposed by economic theory.Through decomposition of the variance, it was found that if women reported the same series of health indicators as men. their use of most services would fall below that of men.     

“松绑”动因

《关于证券公司增资扩股有关问题的通知》规定,对证券公司以后的增资扩股不再设置先决条件,这为证券公司实力的壮大和风险的化解产生积极的影响,同时这也为中国券商迎接入市后的挑战提供了政策上的支持。